Adult and adolescent readers' comprehension monitoring performance: An investigation of monitoring accuracy and related eye movements

Abstract

This study investigated the pattern of eye movements produced when adolescent and adult readers encountered contradictions of common knowledge and crosssentence contradictions. Subjects read paragraphs that did or did not contain inserted errors. Uninformed subjects were asked to prepare to answer a question about each paragraph. Informed subjects were asked to prepare to answer a question, but were also told that the paragraphs might contain errors and that they should prepare to report any errors that were located. Informed adult readers were more aware of inserted errors than were informed adolescent readers and this situation was particularly true when the errors were contradictions of common knowledge. Eye movement patterns were influenced by the presence of inserted errors and by instructions to locate errors.